Sharing lessons learned effectively is key to survival. The problem is, it’s not really obvious how important it is until lives are on the line. In the book, Flawless Execution: Use the Techniques and Systems of America’s Fighter Pilots to Perform at Your Peak and Win the Battles of the Business World
Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:
- Feedback is a part of survival. Too many businesses don’t take survival seriously. When the stakes are high, feedback loops are obvious. Unfortunately, too many businesses end up dying a slow death because they don’t recognize how crucial their feedback loops are to their survival in the long run.
- Feedback loops are too long. If you’re not getting timely feedback to change your approach, your feedback loops are too long..
- Impact isn’t obvious. It’s tough to associate results to actual activities if the feedback loops are too long.
What I think this example below highlights is that you put a premium on transferring knowledge when the stakes are high and you see the immediate impact. Unfortunately, I think in many business scenarios, the feedback loops are too long and the impact isn’t so obvious.
Get Through Those Initial 10 Missions
Murphy shares a particularly colorful story to illustrate the importance of sharing lessons learned:
“Let’s go back in history. In Vietnam, if a fighter pilot could survive his first ten missions, there was a good chance he would survive 100 missions and go home to his family. But the first ten missions were tough — most of the pilots lost were lost inside of ten missions. To survive long enough to go home, a pilot first had to get through those initial ten missions.”
My Related Posts
JD, I think it can can be compared to MTBF what James describes although it might sound cruel comparing people lives/death to MTBF…
So what are your suggestions to shorten feedback loops to make it more impactful?
To shorten feedback loops, I use a few practices. Rather than wait for a post-mortem at the end of a project, I encourage sharing lessons learned as we go along. I use light-weight techniques and chunk it up. For example, one approach is to start an email and dump lessons learned in the form of “do” this or “don’t” do that.
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